How News of Parents’ Activism in Schools Frames Educational Possibilities

Purpose: The researchers examine how parents’ rights groups gain power and how authoritarianism may spread and be received in educational settings. We analyzed US news reporting on parents’ rights activism leading up to the 2024 election and immediately after it, how local place and leaning of news sources inform production of news on parents’ rights activism, how news sources framed messages about parents’ rights activism in light of the outcomes of the 2024 election, and how teachers, families, and children are positioned within media discourses. Research Methods/Approach: We used ethnographic content analysis of frames and discourses in eight major US newspapers across pre-to-post-2024 presidential election periods. Findings: Parents’ rights activists and media tend to use “flood the zone” strategies promoting extremist school politics. Only two parents’ rights groups received consistent coverage but monopolized reporting. Countermovement groups worked against the grain but received limited space in news cycles. Subthemes highlighted these key frames for representing parents’ rights groups’ roles in the authoritarian age of politics: including right-wing mothers’ omnipresence in the news, silencing of countermovement groups, and protection and promotion of elite White heteropatriarchy. The roles of silence and representation of children, families, and teachers in promoting parents’ rights as well as news influence on communities are discussed, along with strategies for undermining parents’ rights. Implications: By studying right-wing women and news representing them, we can gain greater awareness of silences, areas of contestation, and strategies to interrupt threats that parents’ rights bring to public education.